The TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

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June 05, 2013

Oscar Wilde's sac de voyage

By ADRIAN TAHOURDIN

Have you ever wondered what The
Importance of Being Earnest reads like in French? No, neither have I.
But to anyone who would like to find out, I can recommend Charles Dantzig’s
new translation, in a nicely presented bilingual edition published by Grasset. The title itself is a telling choice for a French version:L’Importance d’être constant plays on
the not very common name Constant. Jean Anouilh, by contrast, called his version, in 1954, Il est important d’être aimé.

Charles Dantzig is indefatigable: by my calculation that is his third
publication in a matter of months. (His À
propos des chefs-d’oeuvre will be reviewed in a forthcoming issue of the TLS.) Maybe he’s in too much of a hurry:
in his preface he refers to The Portrait of
Dorian Gray – a common enough error, perhaps.

According to his biographer Richard Ellmann, Wilde considered applying
for French citizenship: “If the Censor refuses Salome, I shall leave England to settle in France where I shall
take out letters of naturalization”. Elsewhere Wilde proclaims, “There is a great deal
of hypocrisy in England which you in France very justly find fault with”. But in
spite of these sentiments, Wilde's work seems to have been a little neglected in France, its author held up, in Dantzig’s
phrase as an “amuseur de petites bourgeoises sentimentales”. Un Mari idéal was only first staged, successfully, in Paris in
1994. And I see there’s a production of The Importance of Being Earnest – again, in a different translation – scheduled for this year’s Avignon Festival.

Dantzig’s introduction has some good nuggets: a musical comedy entitled
Oscar Wilde opened in the West End in 2004 and closed after one night. It was
described by one newspaper as “the worst musical in the world, ever”. He has
rather camply titled his introduction “La Première Gay Pride"; in it, he breezily
runs through the well-known story of Wilde’s triumph and downfall.

But Dantzig
claims to have unearthed some new information, "not told in any account of
Wilde’s life up till now, not even the excellent Richard Ellmann”, whose
account of the funeral in Bagneux, some 7 km south of Paris (his remains were
transferred to the Jacob Epstein tomb in the Père Lachaise cemetery in 1909)
includes this: “At the graveside there was an unpleasant scene, which none of
the principals ever described – perhaps some jockeying for the role of
principal mourner. When the coffin was lowered, [Lord Alfred] Douglas almost
fell into the grave” (Oscar Wilde,
1987).

We learn from Dantzig that the poet Paul Fort (1872–1960), the author of Ballades françaises, gave a
description of the funeral on French radio in 1950. But, as relayed by Dantzig,
Fort’s account doesn’t appear to add much. Ellmann mentions a “Marcel
Bataillant” as having attended. Fort refers to Marcel Batilliat, “petit
romancier charmant venu spécialement de
Versailles” (not that far away). Batilliat was apparently a friend of Émile
Zola (although he doesn’t feature in the index of Frederick Brown’s mammoth
biography).

The TLS had a paragraph
on one of Batilliat’s novels, La Liberté (1913), that goes: “There are three heroines in this story, and all three wish to lead their own lives. One seeks liberty through a loveless marriage; another in a brief liaison; and the third in a series of lovers. One can imagine such a book
being humorous, but, like so many French novels of the kind, the author has
written it with a purpose – this being, it is hardly necessary to say, to show
that true liberty is found in normal, sane surroundings”. You had to be
there.

Comments

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This looks fascinating. I think the French were more appreciative of his genius than the English but this doesn't - as you say - account for the way he has perhaps been overlooked by translators and producers. Nevertheless, three years after the debut French production of 'Un Mari Ideal' you mention, there was another production by Pierre Laville, followed by publication, in 1999, of Laville's original translation. And Laville returned to Wilde in 2006 with a production of his own (unpublished) translation of The Importance of Being Earnest - which he too called 'L'Importance d'Etre Constant'.

I'm quoting from memory, but doesn't Jack say, when consulting the Army Lists at the end of the play to discover his father's - and therefore his own - name, 'these delightful volumes should have been my constant study'?
You'd have to be there.

This looks fascinating. I think the French were more appreciative of his genius than the English but this doesn't - as you say - account for the way he has perhaps been overlooked by translators and producers.

'Un Mari idéal was only first staged, successfully, in Paris in 1994.' Not so: it was staged at the Théàtre de l’œuvre in 1955. One might also note the France Télévision production of 1972.

'Wilde's work seems to have been a little neglected in France'. H'mm. At least ten editions in 2010, eight editions in 2011, ten in 2012 ... adding up to over 400 since Stuart Merrill's translation of The Birthday of the Infanta [as ‘L’anniversaire de la Naissance de la Princesse’]in 1889.

Throw in the issues consecrated to Wilde of the Magazine Littéraire, of Lire, and of the Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens; watch the films directed by Christian Merlhiot (2010)and Charles Di Meglio (2011); look out for the festival planned for June 2014 at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris; and then decide whether Wilde is 'a little neglected' here !